Games Workshop are spaffing Warhammer 40,000 licenses all over the place lately, with predictably mixed-but-a-bit-bleh results. However, one did land at Streum On Studio to make first-person shooter Space Hulk: Deathwing. Yes, the folks who made E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy. Their FPS-RPG debut was awfully wonky yet jolly ambitious, and quite endearing because of that. It’s nice to know that one of the oodles of 40K games should be, at the very least, interesting.

The first ‘screenshots’ arrived in our inbox this morning, and while they’re clearly staged they do have plenty of pretty Space Marine Terminator armour to ogle.

Deathwing is another FPS-RPG, with levelling up and skill points and skill trees and all that as your Terminator squad stomp around a colossal derelict space ship squashing Tyranids. The player character is a Librarian from the Dark Angels’ Deathwing company, which in 40K terms means you’re a space-wizard. An eight-foot space-wizard with a honking great gun, which is something I’m always willing to be.

E.Y.E danced around 40K imagery with its warrior monks in chunky cyberarmour stomping around dystopian industrial cityscapes, but Streum On have really gone to town on Space Hulk. The ornate detailing on power armour, banners, and statues is quite something. I visited Saint Bavo Cathedral in Belgium this weekend and was appalled to realise that Gothic stylings now mostly remind me of 40K. Anyway, have a gander:

Technically the game isn’t confirmed for PC yet, nor any console either, but it’d be jolly cruel if publisher Focus Home’s PR sent these to us as a prank.

Absolutely. Christianity influences 40k ideologically too, from what I remember. I haven’t messed around with my models for years, it seems like, but from what I remember, wasn’t there an Inquisition of sorts, who’s structure resembled that of the papacy There are many other examples, too, but I’m pretty removed from them, time wise, and I really never got into the lore, outside of the absolute basics (bad guys, good guys, neutral guys, etc).

The space marines and a few other things are inspired by Catholic militant orders and medieval Catholic theocracies yes.

However, a lot of this came about indirectly because the main inspiration for the 40k universe, it’s spacefaring methods, pseudo-religious techno-spiritualism, psychers, and much more besides, is Frank Herbert. Dune is full of very unsubtle themes relating to the idea of a part medieval Catholic part Islamic far future interplanetary evolution of human religions in a sort of cosmic dark age.

Maybe it’s fairer to say that 40k’s Imperium is the extraction of those elements from Dune, and the refinement of them into a sort of far future version of a western Roman empire that is somehow clinging on to its existence even though it has already fallen.

Yeah, I imagine it’s a smattering of influences, but the Gothic Christian influence is strong. Even skulls are a creepy part of various Christian aesthetics – St Valentine is totally 40K: link to atlasobscura.com

I’ve always felt that the Source engine, and games that use it, have very clunky movement.

When I picked up Titanfall (Just to give a recent example) I could instantly recall why I didn’t like it even though I haven’t really played that many recent games that use it. It just feels… wrong somehow when moving about :)

Prehaps I need to show on the Source doll where it hurt me, I don’t know :)

Well you’re certainly entitled to your own experience, but I’m not sure it’s really shared by that many people. The movement in Titanfall is widely praised! And personally I find the movement in TF2 and L4D2 to be excellent.

Well, technically its being constantly updated, so it bears little resemblance to the original source engine as used in HL2. Most engine building companies release major versions of their engines for marketing purposes, but valve has scrooge mcduck style money vats and no share holders, so they don’t give a shit about marketing.

I don’t know if it’s just me, or what, but using the latest, clean install of Firefox, I’ve been having so much trouble for the last six months or so: only browsing RPS, each page seems to take up larger and larger amounts of system memory, the more tabs I have opened from this site. It’ll almost paralyze my computer, it’s so bad. *shrug* It’s just not him, I suppose.

I’m sorry, but kindly leave my machine alone since you know absolutely nothing about it. I have no idea what causes the issue, but on occassion I’m forced to use Internet Explorer instead of Firefox (it’s up date with no add-ons installed, Mr Whatever Mess You Have On Your Machine).
Judgining from toxic avenger’s post, the software behind RPS might not like Firefox for some reason.

I recall encountering an issue not unlike what you describe there toxic. I ultimately reached the conclusion that it was the result of a particular advertisement that was being displayed in the background. I think the problem either only appeared when the ad was present or that it started at the same time the ad started appearing, but I can’t recall which.

Finally a Warhammer 40k game that worth playing; since the DoW series and Space Marine, the only thing I was seeing was wannabe indie crap with no soul; and btw, I really loved E.Y.E – Divine Cybermancy, that is one of my favorite games, which I finished three times in a row just because. It has solid shooter mechanics, an awesome character progression and yes, I loved the story too! I was happy when I heard that Streum On was taking care of it for us.

Yaaaaay! A new 40k game that won’t be inherently terrible from the outset! Hopefully in the future, we can look back on the lane strategy and chess period of 40k games as “a dark and terrible time, but things are better now.”

Daamn I think the world is about to end, finally GW licensed wh40k to a company which actually WANTS to do a wh40k game. Considering the sidesteps they did in E.Y.E. to avoid a cease and desist from GW this actually let their hands free in creative department. Or at least I hope so, the final product might be… problematic.